Water Utility Digital Library
The ExtractIQ Water Utility Digital Library Solution provides a simple and cost-effective way to capture current and historical files so they become more useful to your organization. These records will be uploaded to your current Document Management System, or alternatively, we will configure a Microsoft SharePoint Document Library for you to use as the digital library.
Water Utilities often have a long history with original construction having taken place more than 50-years ago. As infrastructure improvements are made to support growing populations, regulatory changes and operational efficiencies, having access to as-constructed and as-maintained design and operational records can save time and money.
The ExtractIQ solution captures records regardless of their origin and current location – older files often only residing in paper format whereas current files being in modern Office and CAD formats. All are processed to categorize and place them within a digital library designed for Water Utilities.
Typically, when manually capturing legacy files, a subject matter expert needs to read the contents of each file to classify and assign metadata values which describe the contents. Examples might be Title, Site Location or Document Number. This process is cumbersome, slow and error prone. Therefore, capturing a large volume of historical files is usually impractical. ExtractIQ changes this paradigm by automating the process and gives you the opportunity to leverage this historical information when researching and planning business change.
How will this help our Organization?
We have many years experience working with the Water Utility industry and our software and services will provide the following benefits:
- Having access to original as built specifications and drawings, shop drawings and O&M manuals will improve efficiency when planning plant level changes.
- Increase productivity when searching for historical information for capital projects, minor works and maintenance.
- Improved audit and compliance via immediate access to financial, legal and correspondence records.
- Better manage and retain public facing records such as monthly meeting records and bulletins.
- Faster onboarding of new team members as company historical data is instantly available.
- Reduction of ongoing IT costs and paper storage costs as legacy File Servers, IT applications can be retired and physical space made available.
How does it work?
We perform an initial on-site analysis of your existing information, whether in paper or electronic form. From this we are able to build a top level classification of your information and we can jointly map out a 12-month capture plan based on your prioritization. This might be based on the requirements for an upcoming capital project, the physical condition of existing records, limitations of current storage location etc.
We then decide where to store the digital records once captured and processed, this could be within one or more existing systems you already use or we will implement a SharePoint Digital Library for this purpose free of charge. We provide a process for you to provide access to your paper and / or electronic files; we then process them to categorize them, extract metadata and add them to the digital library. We provide you with a monthly report to monitor progress.
There are several methods available that allow us to access your files. This depends on where the files are stored today. The process is secure, reliable and will satisfy IT scrutiny.
How do you control the quality?
We perform quality assurance on the files as they are processed thus ensuring the categorization and metadata has been generated correctly. If we encounter any quality issues with your files, we will not process them but immediately identify them for remedial action before reprocessing.
How much does it cost?
Our pricing for the Water Utility Digital Library is based on a service model, you pay a monthly fee which covers all software, services and customer support. When we look at your requirements, we will map out the fixed cost per month for a subscription term. In this way, you can control the monthly costs by capturing your historical files gradually over a period of time.
How do we get started?
Contact our Sales team to arrange an initial meeting. We will use this meeting to get to know your requirements and provide immediate feedback. If we do not think we can meet your needs, we will tell you up-front and recommend other options. If we both agree we are a good fit for your business requirements, we recommend our 5-Point Action Plan:
- Understand the different types, estimated quantity and location of your existing legacy files.
- Prioritize the existing legacy files into groups and order based on anticipated business benefit and ease of accessibility.
- Identify mandatory metadata requirements from your existing electronic library and discover optional metadata.
- Understand the mechanism we will use to receive files for processing to meet your organizational IT security constraints.
- Validate ExtractIQ processing against a sample of your files to meet the metadata requirements. Adjust, if required, and re-validate.
We look forward to hearing from you soon.